A Grand Jury in the United States District Court for Texas has served a subpoena on Infosys Technologies seeking details pertaining to the company's usage of B1 business visas.

In a filing with the Bombay Stock Exchange, Infosys said that it intends to comply with the subpoena and cooperate with the Grand Jury's investigation. Subpoena is a writ issued by a court seeking production of evidence from a company or person and failure to do so can attract penalty.

The Grand Jury has asked the company to submit records connected with Infosys' sponsorship for uses of B1 business visas, which are meant for short duration and are used for business meetings and conferences.

Infosys has faced at least two other cases in the US in the recent past. In the first, New Jersey-based 58-year-old Ralph DeVito accused the company of age discrimination for setting an upper limit of 25 years. According to US law, a member who goes to the US on a B1 cannot be employed there.

Mr Chandramouli C. S., Director, Globalisation Advisory for Zinnov Management Consulting, pointed out that issues like these do not have simple answers. He explained that IT firms which have global delivery model as their business model, carry out nearly 90 per cent of their work offshore and the rest onsite.

Therefore, technical leads who head these projects are sent to the client site mostly in the US for knowledge transfer or for a briefing on client requirements.

“Do you call it work or a meeting? This is a grey area. What is actually a discussion to determine the scope of a project could be perceived by the visa officer at the port of entry as a project,” he said.

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